Monday, 31 July 2017

Recent events suggest not as potential applicants such as
French Guiana and Zanzibar are not only being discouraged but also punished and
the shadow of FIFA’s new president Gianni Infantino hovers over these moves.

At the recent 2017 Gold Cup, French Guiana had a 0-0 draw with
Honduras over-turned and the match given as a 3-0 win to their opponents as
punishment for playing Florent Malouda, who had previously played for France 80
times but then featured for the land of his birth at the recent Caribbean Cup (below, right).

An undisclosed fine was also levied on the Ligue de Football de Guyane
(LFG), who believed that CONCACAF rules that had allowed another former Les Bleus Jocelyn Angloma (below) to play for
Guadeloupe in the 2007 Gold Cup after a five-year gap since his last France appearance should stand.

Other examples also exist, such as former Spurs forward Ruel Fox, who played for England B in 1994 then represented Montserrat a decade later when he was the manager of the British overseas territory.French territories have also played at previous Gold Cups and Martinique - another French territory also outside of FIFA - was also playing at the 2017 edition.

The decision by CONCACAF’s to start adhering to FIFA rules only now smacks either of muddled thinking - or outside interference from FIFA.

The decision
also looks spiteful. On the eve of the Gold Cup, the LFG said it was
considering quitting the confederation due to the crusade against the Caribbean
nations that make up the bulk of CONCACAF’s members by its North American
leadership.

The LFG is
considering joining CONMEBOL, which in terms of geography and travel links makes
more sense.

The LFG was
made a full CONCACAF member in 2013 along with the other French territories of
Guadeloupe, Martinique and Saint Martin, by CONCACAF’s then president Jeffrey
Webb.

The four
French territories seemed set for FIFA membership but this was stopped by both political
opposition in Paris and the arrest of Webb for racketeering in May 2015.

The Canadian
Victor Montagliani was elected was Webb’s permanent replacement in May 2016. By
this time, Infantino had his feet under the president’s desk at FIFA.

Montagliani
is considered very much Infantino’s man; so is the new CAF president Ahmad, who
in March 2017 ousted long-standing Confederation of African Football (CAF) president
Issa Hayatou.

At the same
March 2017 assembly that saw his demise, a motion from Hayatou that Zanzibar be prompted from an associate
member of CAF to a full member was passed.

Zanzibar’s
membership was removed to the disgust of many on the island, which is part of
Tanzania but has played independently in African regional competitions such as
the CECAFA Cup for three quarters of a century.

Zanzibar also
runs its own separate league to Tanzania, enters teams in CAF competitions and
had its CAF application approved by Tanzania football federation president Jamal Malinzi.

So why make
the U-turn now?

In July, Ahmad
pushed through major changes at CAF such as expanding the African Cup of
Nations to 24 teams.

These changes
would have needed tacit support from FIFA and Infantino, so perhaps there was a
cost?

Admitting
Zanzibar (in action against Somalia above) to FIFA would have given CAF as many members as UEFA and led to the
inevitable debate over the number of future places at a World Cup.

Sacrificing
Zanzibar was easy and the U-turn barely registered outside of the African
Island, but like CONCACAF’s move was also muddled and hard to believe.

"CAF cannot admit two different associations from one country," Ahmad told the BBC at the body's extraordinary congress in Morocco. "The definition of a country comes from the African Union and the United Nations," added the Malagasy administrator.

Did CAF’s
president really need four months to make himself aware of Article 4 of his
own statutes, which state ‘CAF shall recognise only one association per
country”?

Those
statutes also say that new members can only be admitted and expelled by the
general assembly, and mention nothing about the United Nations or African
Union.

This year, UEFA made a minor – and largely unnoticed –
change to its membership criteria.

Previously, Article 5 said that "membership of
UEFA is open to national football associations situated in the continent of
Europe, based in a country which is recognised by the United Nations as an
independent state, and which are responsible for the organisation and
implementation of football-related matters in the territory of their country."

The updated version says that new members must be recognised “as an independent state by the majority of
members of the United Nations.”

That minor tweak almost certainly rules out any attempts by the likes
of the Channel island of Jersey to join UEFA and justifies the begrudging
admission in May 2016 of Kosovo, which was virtually forced on the European
body by FIFA during the reign of disgraced former president Sepp Blatter.

So, these federations rendered outcasts in Infantino’s new world order
must labour on with little support or development from the bodies supposedly
responsible for developing football in these isolated places.

Or from FIFA.

And there’s the rub. Is there perhaps another motive for this
hardening stance to potential new members?

To get elected, Infantino pledged to raise FIFA’s Financial Assistance
Programme to the world body’s 211 members from U$D1 million every four years to
U$D5 million.

Champagne was ignored and Infantino won by a landslide as the small,
impoverished associations which make up the bulk of FIFA’s membership swung firmly
behind the Swiss Italian and his costly FAP offer.

Since then, sponsors for FIFA’s 2018 and 2022 World Cups – the world
body’s main earner – have proved slow to emerge when compared to the last
tournament in Brazil in 2014.

FIFA is desperate for cash and federations have complained at the speed of money coming through from
FIFA’s Forward programme, which replaced the GOAL development scheme.

Maybe other costs are also being cut and FIFA is making sure that no
new members emerge from its six confederations to try and claim a their share of the FAP pot?

Friday, 14 July 2017

In
the last decade, the notion of Non-FIFA football, of a game played outside the
auspices of the games increasingly corrupt and bedevilled governing body has
taken hold.

From
the formation of the NF Board in 2003 for representative teams that FIFA cannot
cope with, to an increasing plethora of tournaments from the Viva World Cup to
the Wild Cup and the ConIFA World Football Cup, gaining recognition through
playing ‘international’ football has never been easier.

Initially,
this involved teams such as the Sami (or Laplanders, as they prefer not to be
known) and Occitania, a side aimed at keeping alive the ancient culture of
Occitan and in particular its language. To play for Occitania, all you need is
to be able to speak the language.

Other
more controversial teams took part, such as the Turkish Republic of Northern
Cyprus (TRNC), whose independence in 1983 remains recognised only by its
sponsor in Turkey.

The
TRNC at least had clubs and leagues unlike the Padania team, which had strong
links to the Liga Nord political party in Italy, and was the first to try and
colonise this emerging and uncontested sporting vacuum.

More
recently this space has been occupied by the increasing number of states to
emerge from military intervention in eastern Europe that is, at one level or
another, inspired, supported or militated by Russia. From Nagorno-Karabakh to
the ‘independent’ states of Abkhazia, the Donetsk People’s Republic, South
Ossetia and Transnistria, football is becoming a new front for expansion
backed, directly or indirectly, by Russia.

This front is aimed more at recognition
from the game’s governing bodies than the most of the founding teams in the NF
Board, which was first the Non-FIFA Board, before becoming – in an attempt not
to be defined solely in opposition to the game’s governing body – the New
Federation Board.

This
early Non-FIFA movement was naïve, but the organisation was typified by a
return to some of the ideals that defined the emergence of organised and
codified sport in the Victorian era, notably the importance of fair play and a
post-match celebration of the cultures involved. Teams like Occitania and the
Sami did not want independence, they wanted to keep their culture alive, while
some places outside of FIFA with legitimate ambitions for recognition, such as
Greenland, were already tired of the corrupt behemoth that ran global football
by the turn of the Millennium.

However,
FIFA had money and what also typified this nascent Non-FIFA movement was lack
of financial resources. As a result, what began as a naïve idea to provide an
international waiting room for teams outside of FIFA suffered growing pains as
fractious schisms allowed for the politicisation of the early Non-FIFA World.

This
began at the outset, when the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus was chosen as
host for the NF Board’s first competition, the 2006 Viva World Cup. Disputes
over money and the inclusion of Kurdistan saw the hosts and NF Board fall out,
but the TRNC had money, and an estimated £100,000 was spent flying in and
accommodating teams from Greenland to Zanzibar.

The tournament also saw the
first emergence of teams from the post-Soviet sphere with Gagaúzia, an
autonomous region of Moldova, and a side representing the Crimea taking part.
The independent state of Kyrgyzstan, which had unofficial trade links with the
TRNC, also entered a team in what became the ELF Cup.

The
appearance of Gagaúzia and Crimea signified a first attempt to use football to
set down a marker for recognition as separatist ambitions in these post-Soviet
territories. While Gaugazia remains an autonomous region of Moldova, in 2014
the Crimea would be annexed by troops supported by the Russian military.

Using
football to further political recognition continued as the NF Board pushed on
with its own Viva World Cup (VWC), which included Iraqi Kurdistan and Padania. Padania
won the second VWC in 2008, hosted and won the next event the following year
and completed a hat-trick of titles in Gozo in 2010 before Kurdistan hosted the
biggest and most successful event in 2012. Nine teams took part and all the
games were broadcast by Iraqi network Al Iraqiya with a crowd of around 20,000
watching the final.

Just
as the TRNC’s government helped cover the costs of teams taking part in the
2006 ELF Cup, Kurdistan’s independence seeking administrations saw the
political benefits of bankrolling the 2012 VWC. With accommodation covered by
the hosts along with all flights from Istanbul to Erbil, this boosted the
number of teams and saw more sides representative of political ambitions with
Western Sahara and Tamil Eelam taking part and the TNRC returning to the fold.

This
was also the last VWC to date as internecine fighting ripped the board apart
with founders Christian Michelis and Jean Luc Kit falling out and the argument
ultimately ending up in court in Belgium[1].

Out
of the ashes of this acrimonious conflict, a new body emerged in 2013 that was
keen to eschew the oppositional Non-FIFA stance. The Confederation of
Independent Football Associations (ConIFA) worked with a speed that the founders
of the NF Board never managed.

Within
two years of the last Viva World Cup, the first ConIFA World Football Cup was
staged in Östersund in the Swedish part of Sápmi and 12 teams – four times as
many as took part in the first VWC eight years earlier – participated. Of these
dozen entrants, eight had featured at NF Board events but what marked this
tournament out was the first appearance of a number of new teams from
post-Soviet frozen conflict zones with Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh and South
Ossetia all entering.

With
Russian backing, Abkhazia split from Georgia after an armed conflict in 1992/93
but only Russian, Nauru, Nicaragua and Venezuela only recognized this
independence. In 2008, the Georgian parliament passed a resolution declaring
Abkhazia a Russian occupied territory[2].
In 2014, there was significant political unrest in Abkhazia and in particular
the liberal policy of Abkhazian President Ankvab towards ethnic Georgians still
living in the Gali region[3].

In
a significant sign of nationalist intent, Abkhazia entered the ConIFA World cup
and on June 1 2014 – a day after Ankvab quit – the team played Occitania in
Sweden, drawing 1-1. Since then, the relationship between the Abkhazian
military and Russia has grown closer with the signing of a treaty later that
year, which Georgia declared was a “step towards annexation” and the football
authorities want UEFA recognition[4].

Unlike
some Russian conflict zones Abkhazia has a long football history and a domestic
league quickly emerged after the split from Georgia and has been regularly
contested with 10 clubs taking part.

Abkhazian League 2017

Club

Town

Abazg

Sukhum

Afon

Novy Afon

Dinamo

Sukhum

Ertsakhu

Ochamhira

Gagra

Gagra

Nart

Sukhum

Ritsa

Gudauta

Samursakan

Gal

Shaktar

Tkvarchel

Spartak

Sukhum

After
Quebec withdrew from the 2014 ConIFA Football World Cup, another Georgian
conflict zone took up the opportunity to express their independence on the
football field.South Ossetia split from
Georgia in an armed conflict that led to independence recognised only by the
same states as Abkhazia.

In
common with Abkhazia, South Ossetia is also heavily reliant on Russia economic,
political and military aid and this extended to the football field. In Sweden
in 2014, South Ossetia’s team included a number of professionals from Russian
clubs, particularly Alania Vladikavkaz, which is the capital of North Ossetia
and suggests some Russian influence in the formation of the South Ossetian team[5].

Like the national teams that bear the
names of these frozen zones, putting across the idea of organised football to
the outside world in an attempt to find normality and a common ground with the
recognized football world is often more important than actually playing the
games. At one point, South Ossetia engaged an American public relations firm,
Saylor, to engage with the outside world but matches from the nascent South
Ossetian league do not suggest a top tier featuring players at the peak of
their careers[6].

Though
not directly annexed with the help of Russian military backing,
Nagorno-Karabakh also emerged from the break-up of the post-Soviet Union and
with the aid of Armenia and more tacit Russian support, split from Azerbaijan. Since the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia military support has
guaranteed Armenian independence and the annexation of Nagorno-Karabakh would
not have occurred without some form of tacit Russian approval. And, just as Abkhazia and South
Ossetia are recognized as part of Georgia by the United Nations, Artsakh - as
the region is known locally – is recognized as part of Azerbaijan.Football
in these breakaway zones exists, but on a very low level. Samuel Karapetyan
formed the Artsakh Football Federation (AFA) in 2012, three years after the local
championship had resumed. The AFF claim that nine teams took part in the first
championship in 2009 and that 10 teams are included but sources interviewed
locally suggest that little football is played outside of the capital
Stepanakert. Some of the names bear this out. Jraberd is in the ceasefire line,
where skirmishes with the Azeris are not uncommon, Qirs is a mountain and
Khachen is the name of a medieval village in Artsakh[7].

When
a journalist from The Independent
visited Nagorno-Karabakh in 2017, only one ‘formal’ football club, FC Artsakh,
appeared to actually exist yet the AFA claimed to have started negotiations
with UEFA about potential membership in November 2016[8].

The Artsakh League?

Avo

Berd

Breeder

Dizak

Gandasar

Jraberd

Khachen

L Artsakh
1

L
Artsakh 2

Qirs

Sending
a team to a one-off tournament, particularly one where the costs on arrival are
covered, as is often the case at Non-FIFA events, is a more pragmatic solution
to engaging with the process of football recognition. The notion of football
activity in these isolated states is given more credence through this
participation, which is then often mediatised internationally.

The
role of international teams is equally important in these post-Soviet states’
quest not just for normalcy but also the acquisition of soft power. In sporting
terms, staging mega events can raise the role of a once little known country
such as Qatar, and simply playing matches can help unrecognized states. The
decision by FIFA to agree to let Kosovo play international friendly matches was
the first step in an inevitable acceptance by the international footballing
community that led to inclusion by UEFA and FIFA.

Kosovo has, though, been recognized on a
political level by significantly more countries than any of the members of the
Community for Democracy and Human Rights (CDHR), which was formed in 2001 and
includes Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia and Transnistria, which is
claimed by Moldova. Like the TRNC, these four post-Soviet conflict zones exist
in virtual isolation. Political recognition is rare and can prove transitory
with Tuvalu recognizing Abkhazia and South Ossetia in 2013 then retracting this
in 2014.

With
the exception of FC Sheriff Tiraspol in Transnistria, club football mostly only
subsists in these post-conflict states due to the lack of financial assistance,
while in the countries they have broken away from the names of more successful
sides in the old Soviet structure, such as Spartak Tshkhinvali from South
Ossetia and Garabagh Agdam from Nagorno-Karabakh are nurtured and kept alive by
the Georgians and Azeri political administrations.

Prior
to the 2014 ConIFA event, Abkhazia played three ‘internationals’ with home and
away games against Nagorno-Karabakh in 2012 and a game in the Abkhazian capital
Sukhum with South Ossetia in 2013.Those games represented ‘international’ debuts for South Ossetia and
Nagorno-Karabakh and activity since the ConIFA event has been muted.

In
Abkhazia however, the ambitions grew but remain linked with Russian political
manouvering. In 2015, Abkhazia played games against the nascent Donetsk
People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic and in 2016, the Abkhazian
ambitions for the use of football as a soft power weapon went one step further
with €450,000 spent on staging of the second ConIFA Football World Cup in
Sukhumi. Though South Ossetia and Nagorno-Karabakh did not take part in the
2016 ConIFA a team
from the western part of the Armenian Highlands, which is located in Turkey,
featured alongside traditional members of the Non-FIFA community including
Padania and the TRNC.

In
many cases, these ‘national’ teams are organised not by locals but by the
Diaspora, such as the Chagos, Panjab and Somaliland, which are all based mostly
in the UK. As such, they come from richer, more developed countries where
raising the funds to attend is less problematic and the political aim is less
defined.

This contrasts with the post-Soviet frozen conflict states, which are
driven by local administrations and using the emerging ConIFA organisation and other more established cultural organisations to develop sporting soft
power.

In
2008, the Federal Union of European Nationalities (FUEN) organised the first
Europeada tournament for autonomous national minorities in Europe to run in
conjunction with UEFA’s Euro 2008 and the tournament was staged at Grisons, in
the centre of the Romansh culture in Switzerland.

This event was, like the
early ambitions of NF Board, aimed at keeping minority languages and cultures
alive and further tournaments followed in 2012 in the home of the Lusatian Sorbs,
who are the smallest Slavic minority in Europe with about 60,000 people in the
East of Saxony and Lower Lusatia.

These
first two Europeada tournaments were, like the early days of Non-FIFA movement,
untainted by overt politisation but as the use of football for soft power has
grown in the Soviet sphere, Europeada has also been embraced.

The
FUEN’s 2016 Europeada event was staged in the Pusertal Valley and Badia Valley
in the south Tyrol, where one of the teams includes the Crimean Tatars. A side
from the Turkic Karachay Balkars from the Russia Caucasus also entered then
withdrew, but minorities from within Russia did take part.

A side representing
the German-speaking people of Russia competed, so the Russians would not seem
to be suppressing minorities within its own borders, but then German-speaking
peoples of Russia appear to have no separatist ambitions – certainly none that
Russia’s hard-line leader Vladimir Putin would allow.

The
Europeada events have attracted little media coverage unlike the ConIFA
tournaments, whose 2016 Football World Cup in Abkhazia attracted global
attention with The Guardian newspaper
making a documentary about the Kurdish side, Desert Fire. For countries like Armenia this was updating an old football history.

In a media landscape
dominated by the major European leagues, these sorts of stories are attracting
increasing interest and this has clearly not gone unnoticed by other breakaway
states seeking further recognition, such as Crimea.

In
2015, a UEFA delegation visited Crimea to assess the situation after the
Russian annexation, which was followed by an attempt to place two clubs who had
previously played in the Ukrainian league, FC Sevastopol and SC Tavriya Simferopol,
into the Russian system.

In January 2015, UEFA ruled against this and the clubs
withdrew to a nascent Crimean league formed with help from UEFA executive
committee member Frantisek Laurinc[9].
The Crimea have received some recognition of their situation with UEFA
promising at a meeting on 10 March 2017 to provide funding of €1 million to the
Crimean Football Association (CFA), which claims to have 109 youth clubs but no
pitches[10].
This money has been slow in arriving and may only do so once the European Union
lifts economic sanctions after Russia’s annexation of the peninsula.

For
all the promise of money, the CFA have been offered no recognition from UEFA
but other alternatives exist that are helping promote the concept of
nationhood. In 2016, ConIFA recognised the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk
People’s Republic and has both visited and recognised Transnistria after the
establishment of the Football Federation of Pridnestrovie in 2015 to represent
an independent Transnistria[11].

While
ConIFA has taken steps to stop political activity and even refused to admit
Padania until the football operation had broken ties with the Liga Nord
political party, simply by allowing teams to play gives a veneer of
recognition.

The footballers from these states may not be seeking any form of
political recognition, but their appearance on the football field is manna from
heaven for politicians who seek wider political recognition and who, in the
case of the CHDR bloc are economically, militarily or politically backed to
some extent or another by Russia.

While China is increasingly looking to
use its economic wealth to buy up football through sponsorship, club
acquisition and paying inflated wages for overseas players in its domestic
league and the USA is looking to establish a role as the game’s guardian angle
through the prosecution of FIFA corruption, Russia’s covert role in football’s
new Cold War has received less attention.

At
a grass roots level, this embracing of the Non-FIFA movement helps keep the
game alive in unrecognised regions where the game’s football bodies are unable
or unwilling to assist and provides a focal point for a national identity that
goes ignored elsewhere.

This can be a powerful motivator for people in these
isolated states. When Abkhazia faced Szekely Land – a team drawn from the
Hungarian-speaking minority of Romania – in a third place play-off for ConIFA’s
2017 European Football Championship in Northern Cyprus, the crowd was only
small in Kyrenia but thousands had assembled in the main square in the Abkhaz
capital of Sukhum to watch the game – only for the live-stream to fail.

Another
corollary of this ‘international’ activity is that, in the absence of help from
UEFA and FIFA actually arriving, the presence of these games helps to build an
international football empire for Russia ahead of staging the 2018 World Cup
finals.

China
indirectly control two FIFA members in the former British and Portuguese
colonies of Hong Kong and Macau, while the USA exert ultimate political control
over four FIFA members - American Samoa, Guam, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin
Islands - and also the Asian Football Confederation associate member, Northern
Mariana.These
Sino and American holdings are a result of historical anomalies and cannot be
matched by Russia, whose indirect football ambitions are new ones and suggest
that Putin’s administration is alive to the potential of sporting recognition
as part of a wider global positioning.

Once
the 2018 FIFA World Cup has gone, will these unrecognised states pursue further
international recognition via UEFA and FIFA, or will Russia step in with
political and financial help to make these unrecognised conflict states part of
a new post-Soviet sporting empire?This is an updated version of a paper given at the annual conference of the Sport & Politics group of the Political Studies Association in Bournemouth in 2016.My BBC World Service report on the 2016 ConIFA European Football Championships in Northern Cyprus can be heard 7 minutes into this link.

[1] ‘Non-FIFA football in
quarrel’ by Menary, Steve. Playthegame.org 13 March 2015, downloaded 27 June
2017.

Friday, 18 March 2016

Readers of this blog may be interested in this short report of mine carried by the BBC World Football programme on the influx of Spanish footballers into Gibraltar since the British Overseas territory was admitted to UEFA in 2013.

The piece is in this week's World Football show and can be accessed here.

A feature on football in Gibraltar in World Soccer magazine's Eye Witness series is in the April 2016 issue and can be read here.

Friday, 24 July 2015

Greenland made what is their only regular international football appearance at the last Island Games in Jersey and, despite missing out on a medal, were one of only two teams to finish the tournament unbeaten.

Greenland had won a silver medal at the last Island Games in Bermuda two years ago, but that only featured four teams. In Jersey, so many of the Island Games Association's 24 members entered football teams that the organisers had to restrict the field to 16 teams and turn teams away.

Greenland's Ethiopian coach Tekle Ghebrelul (pictured above) was left to rue his team twice giving away a hard secured lead against Menorca in their opening game, which finished 2-2. In their second match at St Clement, Greenland (in white, below) easily dispatched the Finnish island of Aland 2-0 and had a chance to make the semi-finals if they beat the Estonians of Saarema in their final match and results elsewhere went their way.

The impressive Frederick Funch, (below) a children's worker in Nuuk whose opportunities two years ago in Hamilton were restricted by injury, scored for a third consecutive game in a 2-1 win over Saarema but that was not enough. Menorca progressed on goal difference and Greenland were left to contend a play-off with 2011 winners the Island of Wight for fifth place.

Greenland beat the Isle of Wight 2-1 but now have to sit about waiting for a game. The GBU has plans for €10 million indoor arena in Nuuk with an artificial pitch but the Arctic island's strict building regulations and lack of money are major obstacles.

For more on the 2011 Island Games, read my piece in the July 2015 issue of World Soccer magazine and for more on Greenlandic football, my piece for the BBC World Football programme is available for download here.

This blog is about those footballing nations not recognised by FIFA. I've written about them in my book, "Outcasts! The Lands That FIFA Forgot", which was shortlisted for NSC football book of the year award in the 2008 and is published by Know The Score Books.

NEW EDITION OF OUTCASTS NOW AVAILABLE ON KINDLE. NEW PHOTOS AND EPILOGUE - FOR MORE DETAILS CLICK HERE.

Blog traffic: More than 300,000 page views on this blog since July 2007

With forewords by Adrian Chiles and David Conn."Outcasts! The Lands That FIFA Forgot" examines the much tarnished reputation of FIFA, the governing body of world football, and just how they justify the exclusion of some 'nations' while welcoming others - either for reasons of political expediency, or because FIFA just believed they could not compete with the likes of Montserrat on the world stage.

REVIEWS FOR OUTCASTSOutcasts! is a must-read for all football fans - Sporting Life

Excellent - Scotland on Sunday

Menary is an enthusiast with a talent for getting the best out of his interviewees and a keen eye for the encapsulating episode - Daily Telegraph

As good as it gets - Birmingham Post

Buy this - The Times

Lively, informative - The Independent on Sunday

Thought provoking questions about the nature of national identity - Four Four Two

One book that might intrigue the discerning reader - Sunday Telegraph

Menary is an admirably sure-footed guide ... he never loses sight of the human stories ... a gentle meditation not merely on the power of football, but also on what it means to be a country - Jonathan Wilson

BY THE SAME AUTHORGB United? British Olympic Football and the end of the amateur dream (Pitch 2010)

Menary does an outstanding job. GB United? is a historical tome telling a story that has been forgotten and overlooked elsewhere. This story is as much about a class struggle in twentieth century Britain as anything else, but in this case it was a struggle that the ruling class were always going to lose.Those that ran the game at the start of the twentieth century may well look at modern football and wonder what on earth it has become, but GB United? tells a part of the story that is seldom looked at elsewhere with a keen eye for historical detail, a dry sense of humour and a mixture of disdain and respect for those that ended up shaping many of the paths that modern football would end up taking - Twohundredpercent

Exemplary research, grasp of his material and eye for a quirky fact keep up the interest - Independent on Sunday

Menary carefully explains how amateurism or 'shamateurism' gradually became unacceptable in this country, with everyone being declared just 'players' in 1974.He recounts not only the sad decline of Vivian Woodward, a superb centre-forward and a member of the British team in 1908 and 1912, but also the exploits of Pegasus, who galvanised the amateur game in the early 1950s. It is a valuable contribution to football literature - The Olympian